If you experience chronic stress in your job, work long hours, do shift work, are exposed to excessive Electro Magnesium Field (EMF) environment, have financial, emotional or social pressures, then you are setting yourself up for significant magnesium deficiency.
However, what we are often seeing is people who have a magnesium deficiency that keep subjecting themselves to chronic stress without the opportunity for cells to rest and recover.
As a result, we get overloaded with pollution and metabolic wastes that are slow to be eliminated, and at the same time we can’t get enough antioxidant support and energy to build and repair tissue. This is a recipe for acidosis, blocked tubes and inflammation… A disaster. You can only flog your body so much before it runs out of resources and starts to cave in.
What Drives the Pump?
Magnesium is the master mineral that controls the balance of the sodium-potassium electrolyte pump, including calcium exchanges. Studies have shown that if there is a disturbance in any of the other electrolytes of calcium, potassium or sodium, it is magnesium that has dropped first, thereby causing a chain reaction of other electrolyte disturbances. [3] When magnesium status is restored, the other electrolyte deficiency symptoms usually recover too (unless they are really hugely depleted).
99% of the body’s magnesium resides in muscle, bone and soft tissue cells, with only less than 1% in the blood serum and red blood cells. When you get a blood test to see how much magnesium you have, it is not an accurate indicator of what is in tissue cells, because they can release their stores in order to keep blood levels in the normal range. By the time you see a drop of magnesium in the blood it means the tissue levels are critically low and you are in great danger of an adverse cardiac event.
The body gives priority to maintaining adequate magnesium in the blood because magnesium confers a cardio-protective effect with antioxidant support to the endothelial lining of the arteries.
Testing of magnesium levels in body tissue is a more accurate indicator of total body magnesium status. However, if you are experiencing magnesium deficiency symptoms such as muscle cramps, restless legs, heart rhythm disturbances or hypertension (among others), you can be fairly sure you have a magnesium deficiency. The worse the symptoms – the worse the deficiency.
Catecholamines are hormones that stimulate an action response, and include epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and dopamine. Release of the stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine from the adrenal glands is part of the ‘fight-or-flight’ response at a heightened level when we need to be alert and ready to run fast to escape danger.
Adrenaline is also largely involved in heart muscle activity to pump and push the circulation, but obviously when we are relaxed it is at a lower amount than when in fight-or-flight. Note that adrenaline has an intimate relationship with calcium.
Calcium and magnesium are antagonistic. Calcium contracts and magnesium relaxes the muscle. Magnesium acts as a natural guardian of the cell by occupying the calcium channels of the cell membrane and keeping it charged with ATP, polarised and hydrated so that the calcium is kept out.
For contraction to happen you need to have adrenaline released. This helps the exchange of magnesium for calcium ions, which attach to the proteins of the membrane, some water is released, and the muscle contracts.
To relax again, magnesium ions exchange again with the calcium ions as adrenaline subsides, the cell rehydrates and muscle fibres relax.
To be Continued in the Next issue.